This week. we blogged about the upcoming two-year anniversary of the Recovery Act, President Obama's budget plan, a few hundred Valentine's Day messages for Governor Corbett, sales tax loopholes that only Amazon.com could love, and much more!

In case you missed it:

On the state budget, Michael Wood detailed Amazon's foot-stomping response to efforts by states to close a sales tax loophole that gives the online retailer an unfair competitive edge over other retailers. (Spoiler alert: The brick-and-mortar stores are none too happy about it!) Mike also shined some light on Pennsylvania's "conservative" debt levels and explained that Pennsylvania's debt service payments have long been low — between 3% and 4% of the state budget.

On health care, Chris Lilienthal shared some of the Valentines that Governor Corbett received this week from Pennsylvanians asking him to have a heart and save adultBasic.

On the federal budget, Chris highlighted some analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on President Obama's budget proposal for the 2012 Fiscal Year. Mark Price, meanwhile, shared a video clip of Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs discussing the federal budget and noting that both parties have the wrong priorities by cutting services vital to working- and middle-class families.

Finally, on the economy, Mark Price takes note of the upcoming two-year anniversary of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Mark also blogged that policymakers are focused on the wrong deficit — Main Street America is a lot more concerned about a deficit in jobs and wages than they are about the federal fiscal deficit.

February 17th is the second anniversary of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). I will be back later today to discuss our release of updated estimates of the regional impact of all federal action in the wake of the recession, including the passage of ARRA, but in the meantime, I wanted to share two figures on ARRA.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, discusses the Democratic and Republican federal budget proposals. He argues both proposals focus on the wrong priorities by cutting services vital to working- and middle-class families as well as cutting programs aimed at fighting climate change.

I don't know how Governor Tom Corbett celebrated Valentine's Day on Monday, but I do know that he got a lot more Valentines than I did.

More than 700 people sent the Governor Valentines asking him to have a heart and preserve the state's adultBasic health insurance program. Dozens more sent the Governor the same message on his Facebook page.

According to an article in Monday’s State Tax Notes (subscription required), Amazon has decided to shutter a warehouse facility in Texas rather than pay a $269 million sales tax bill issued by the Texas Comptroller. Lost in this foot-stomping exercise are 119 warehouse jobs and any future plans of expanding in the Lone Star State.

The Texas business community is up in arms about this, but not for the reasons you would think. The President of the Texas Retailers Association said in a statement:

"We sincerely regret that Amazon's irresponsible action appears to be resulting in 119 Texans being told their jobs are being terminated. However, to allow Amazon's current practices to continue is blatantly unfair and injurious to the 1.9 million employees of Main Street Texas retailers who faithfully collect and remit sales taxes to the Comptroller."

The dispute is a common one between Amazon and the states. Amazon claims it has no legal right or duty to collect sales tax from its customers, but states like Texas, Colorado, North Carolina and New York are fighting back. Pennsylvania hasn’t joined the pack — yet.